


Oh Such a Perfect Day (You Just Keep Me Hanging On)

by soft_october



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Pre-Apocalypse, Pre-Relationship, a date that everyone involved is pretending isn't a date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 13:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19110679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: Well, maybe there is one being listening to him, but he’s not Upstairs, not officially.  It’s the angel from the Garden, from the beginning, Aziraphale, and on the odd century they run into each other Crowley goes about his wiles and his tempting with a clean conscience, certain that there is another working against him, that perhaps this balance is all a part of the plan after all, that maybe there is a reason, and god is not just running games and tests from behind a screen and making pointed little laughs and hums inspiring fury and triumph and despair.In the midst of trying to balance out the not-Antichrist, Aziraphale and Crowley take an evening to go to the theater.





	Oh Such a Perfect Day (You Just Keep Me Hanging On)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Lou Reed's Perfect Day.

“Let’s _go_ , angel,” Crowley groans, as the evening sun slides burnt orange rays across the windows of the bookshop, setting the shelves filled with gilded edges alight against old and curling leather covers. One more page, he had been promised, just one more, which had grown to two, then five, and the demon has a mind to miracle the thrice blessed thing into a glossy copy of the latest _Homes and Gardens_ before Aziraphale at last claps the book closed with a beatific smile.

"Ready!" 

“Oh are you, then?" Crowley indicates the dusty grandfather clock, tucked into the corner of the back room since 1947. It reads 6:59. The performance is _supposed_ to begin at 7.

“You know they’ll wait for us, my dear.”

“You've no regard at all for the other theater-goers, angel." But his grin twists the words into exasperated affection.

 

* * *

 

It starts in the Beginning.

Hell is like burned toast (not that a fallen angel with a brand new name he didn’t pick will know what toast is for several centuries) in that it is hot and dark and appalling and only an absolutely lunatic would enjoy it. Crawly’s barely gotten the sulfer smell out of his robe before Lucifer hops right up on his own little ghastly throne and proclaims himself king of the whole pile of rubbish. Three angels - no, not anymore, but he doesn’t know _what_ they are yet - try and make a bid for holding elections instead and they’re vanquished on the spot, screaming in agony as their essence, everything they are, everything they would have ever become, melts into a writhing, steaming puddle on the ground. So much for questioning then, so much for thinking some Almighty calling the shots with no oversight might not be the best way to run the universe.

So much for any of it.

When they ask for volunteers to go topside Crawly can’t get away fast enough, anything to leave this fetid, crowded pit behind before he is ground into dust under Lucifer’s heels or ends up simpering at Morningstar’s feet, desperate for the hints of glory divine still flaking off their self appointed emperor like bits of skin after a sunburn.

Up _there_ is a lovely garden, with a sun and a blue sky and animals and clouds and people, all words and concepts he learns on the very first day because none of them had ever existed before.

At night he watches the slow celestial dance of the stars he helped whisper into being, once upon a time.

Here he meets the Angel, spotting him one morning lying in the grass with his hands behind his head, his eyes closed, flaming sword a breath out of reach next to him. _Cause some trouble_ , Lucifer had said, and killing an angel would certainly cause a great deal of trouble. But the angel shifts in his reverie, letting out a contented little sigh, and something squeezes inside Crawly’s chest. He forgets the whole thing, and slithers off to find the humans instead.

 He talks to the angel, Aziraphale, after the whole bit with the apple. He so tentatively tells Crawly that he’s given away the flaming sword to the humans the demon tempted into knowledge that when Crawly looks at the questions in those blue eyes he sees a shade of himself before the Fall. Perhaps it won’t be so bad, not if he can stay up here.

He’s wrong, of course. Sometimes the earth can be quite terrible indeed.

Demons are supposed to like terrible.

 

* * *

 

The play, _An Ideal Husband_ , begins six minutes and seventeen seconds late, exactly the amount of time it takes a Bentley driving at supernaturally unsafe speeds through London to motor from a bookshop in SoHo to a theater on the West End. (He doesn’t have to drive, it’s barely a short walk, but there’s a special sort of anticipation in driving Aziraphale to the theater, and he wouldn’t miss it for the world.)  

“See?” Aziraphale asks as Crowley jumps the curve and pulled the car to a stop outside the doors. “Exactly as I said. And look! They’re still taking tickets.”

The demon slams the door shut as the angel hands the woman their tickets, made difficult by the fact she’s staring at Crowley’s parking job in a sort of bewildered awe. Crowley tells his car it is very inconspicuous and not in a strange or unusual place at all, and then Aziraphale can maneuver them inside without much more fuss. No mention is made of the delay, and Crowley knows from past experiences no one will even remember by the time the curtain drops.

The performance is adequate, though the actresses playing Lady Chiltern and Mrs. Cheveley keep making eyes at each other that suggest they’re thinking about more than matrimony with the opposite sex. It's exaggerated to the point of distraction, although the delighted little hums he hears from the angel beside him each time a line is delivered with the original intent more than makes up for any deficiencies. Crowley gets them wine at intermission because he’s better at getting the bar to clear out just as Aziraphale is better at making sure the play never begins on time. The only wine available is an abysmal little concoction of bad grapes some PR firm tried to dress up with the name “red blend” (red vinegar blend is more like it) but after a moment to let it breathe and a small, minor miracle on the part of the angel it's somewhat drinkable, though a drop sweeter than before.

The second act passes much the same as the first, and when the cast takes their bow Aziraphale is the first to spring to his feet to give a standing ovation, and Crowley slowly uncoils from his seat to join him.

 

* * *

 

Humans are entirely unlike angels and demons. They are constantly dreaming and imagining and devising, and one of their favorite things to create is new and exciting ways to destroy each other. In those early days god chooses to fight fire with fire, punishing the humans with floods and fires and plagues and pillars of salt, and Crowley (he is Crowley now, _he_ chose it and not anyone else) is bewildered by the whole thing. Should not god set an example for her creations, and temper discipline with mercy? What good is it to hurt the next generation for the sins of their parents? But asking questions is what got him into trouble in the first place, and now he is certain no one is listening, not the other demons, not the princes of hell, not anyone Upstairs, and if anyone does hear him, they sure as heaven aren’t answering.

Well, maybe there is one being listening to him, but he’s not Upstairs, not officially, and he likes to pretend he doesn't.  It’s the angel from the Garden, from the beginning, Aziraphale, and on the odd century they run into each other Crowley goes about his wiles and his tempting with a clean conscience, certain that there is another working against him, that perhaps this balance is all a part of the plan after all, that maybe there is a reason, and god is not just running games and tests from behind a screen and making pointed little laughs and hums inspiring fury and triumph and despair.

However, sometimes he doesn’t see Aziraphale for quite a long time, and during those protracted years of doing whatever hell asks of him, watching humans be born and grow old and die in terrible ways no matter if they strayed or stayed on the path of righteousness, with nothing to temper his mood except as much alcohol as he can imbibe, he tells himself he is fine. Demons are supposed to lie.  

* * *

 

They walk - Aziraphale walks, Crowley saunters - to one of the little cafes Crowley likes, where there are cozy corner tables lit by a single candle and the music is always turned down low. They’ve not yet had supper, and Aziraphale enjoys a good meal any time of the day or night.  

“What did you think?” Aziraphale wonders, as he tucks in to Crowley's dessert. The demon tells him the truth, about the actresses, and Aziraphale brightens.

“Ah yes! It reminded me of the first time, when -” Aziraphale goes off on one of his excited, breathless discussions about the original casting, how Wilde watched from the audience, the things he smiled or frowned upon, and Crowley lets him speak, cradling his head in his hand and wishing smiling at the angel didn't come quite so easily, but it is, and there is nothing he can do about it, nothing he’s been able to do about it for almost six thousand years. How can he, when the angel shines brighter than the sun and Crowley is as helpless in its light as one of the terrified begonias back at his flat.

Just like them, he has no idea what would happen if that light were to one day go out.    

 

* * *

 

“I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley,” Aziraphale snaps, and why can’t he understand that it’s not - it’s not for _that_ , never for that. Only perhaps, one day, they’ll be found out. Crowley will try to fight them, sure, but one demon against all the forces of hell (or heaven, if he has to) are no odds at all, and Crowley would rather go out on his own terms than anyone else's. Or what if hell should activate some sort of control - Crowley doesn’t know how any of it works, he’s never really known, and he isn’t himself any longer, he’s one of _them_ down in that wretched pit, with their bad suits and rotting faces, luddites with no appreciation for anything, not the earth, not humans, not the way a heart can stutter when a pair of blue eyes flashes at you. Better to be erased from existence than to forget that.

But then Aziraphale calls the thing between them _fraternizing_ , and the limitations of that word, the boundaries of it, they're boxing him in with all the things he cannot be or say or do, all the things Aziraphale won’t let them become. The anger always boiling a little below the surface, at hell, at himself, winds itself up and lashes out at the angel instead. Aziraphale leaves, upset, hurt, maybe a little bit afraid.

Crowley is a demon. That’s what demons do.

He hates it.

 

* * *

 

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, isn’t that how the old poem goes? And it doesn’t matter how, he just needs to make sure it doesn’t, that he doesn’t, that above all and everything Aziraphale doesn’t, because what’s the point of the former two without the latter? He doesn’t want to be in a world without the angel, because its only on days like this he can forget heaven, hell, the Antichrist, the end of days, and all the rest of it, can even sometimes forget his own nature, and just be.

“Are you alright?” Aziraphale is wearing his ‘quite concerned’ expression, the one where his eyebrows knit together in the middle and his eyes go all soft and his lips purse just so, and if Crowley was not absolutely certain it would cause a potentially earth shattering row he’d kiss the worry right off his face and watch as it melted into astonished delight. At least that’s what he wants to happen. What he imagines. If the world doesn’t end in the next five years, the angel might even let him.

“Sure I am,” Crowley says, crushing six thousand years of wants and hopes and feelings into the spaces between. “What about you?”

“Oh I’m perfectly fine. Shall we go? I’ve a lovely Medoc waiting back at the bookshop.”

“Let’s go then.”

They will spend the night drinking Aziraphale’s Medoc, and maybe a few bottles more, if Crowley is lucky, all while talking and debating about the past, literature, history, that little brewery in Munich they liked so much (pity it closed down in 1588, Aziraphale will lament), and after they say goodnight Crowley will drive home while Freddie Mercury sings he _can't get used to living without living without living without_ , and Crowley will think about the day they have had together with a stupid half smile on his face, and wonder if, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, with all the days they have left, they might be able to do it all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Tumblr is [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/) if you'd like come by and say hello!


End file.
